James Frey's Blog, page 20
May 12, 2024
Poochapalooza
A canine campaign can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention all the brushing, trimming, blow-drying, and styling products. Did you think it was easy being top dog?
ernard de Menthon was born around the year 1000, near what is now the border of Switzerland and France. He was raised in a castle, given a first-class education, and, in time, affianced by his father to a noblewoman, as befit the scion of an ancient and wealthy family. By then, however, de Menthon had grown into a pious young man whose plans for the future did not include marriage. According to legend, the night before the wedding, he fled the castle by jumping out of a high window, whereupon a band of angels caught him and lowered him gently to the ground.
Ordained as a priest, de Menthon began preaching in villages throughout the region of Aosta, a territory that included a mountain pass already in use for at least a thousand years to cross the Western Alps. In de Menthon’s day, it was a popular route for Christians making the pilgrimage to Rome, but the journey was perilous. Bands of brigands routinely staked out the area to attack travellers, the pass itself was harrowing—eight thousand feet high, buried in snow, prone to avalanches—and de Menthon often found himself ministering to travellers who had been subjected to its terrors. And so, when he became the archdeacon of Aosta, he established a hospice in the pass, staffed by monks who offered aid to pilgrims venturing over the mountains.
At first, the hospice simply provided food, shelter, and a reminder to people inclined to make trouble that they did so under the watchful eye of God, or, anyway, of the godly. Over time, though, the monks began dispatching search parties to recover the missing. No one knows exactly when those search parties first began bringing along dogs, but by the early seventeen-hundreds the search parties were dogs—clever, indefatigable creatures capable of smelling a body under twenty feet of snow, who patrolled the area unaccompanied by humans. They generally travelled in pairs, so that, if they found someone too sick or hurt to move, one dog could return to the hospice to summon help while the other stayed behind, lying down atop the stricken person to offer warmth and hope. At some point, the hospice started keeping track of those rescues; by 1897, when one dog found a boy who had nearly frozen to death after falling into a crevasse, the dogs were known to have saved some two thousand people. Also by then, the long-dead Bernard de Menthon had been canonized, which is why the pass, the hospice, and the dogs themselves are all known today by the name St. Bernard.
May 11, 2024
Gorier and Gorier
The grand old man of B movies on discovering Coppola and Scorsese, making Jack Nicholson cry, and the problem with modern horror
by Tim Robey, FILM CRITIC
Director Roger Corman (left), on set of Pit and the Pendulum (1961), with Vincent Price – Rex/Everett CollectionRoger Corman, director and producer of hundreds of films including 1960’s Little Shop of Horrors, has died aged 98 . In this 2013 interview from The Telegraph’s archives, he spoke candidly about his long career, and the state of contemporary horror cinema.
At 87 years old, Roger Corman is a twinkly gent. He walks with a pronounced stoop, and speaks in careful, precise sentences, making considerable effort not to waste a word. It’s hard to believe the career this benign legend has had, not to mention the careers he’s given others – he gave Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Fonda, Jonathan Demme.
Along the way, Corman has written a handful of films, directed 56, had a couple of dozen, mostly uncredited acting cameos, and produced, in some capacity, about 400 movies. The titles include some of the most wonderfully lurid in film history – take 1957’s Attack of the Crab Monsters, or The Wasp Woman (1959), or Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia (1977). Astonishingly, he’s still working – something called Dance with a Vampyre would appear to be in production now – though he hasn’t directed a film himself since 1990’s Frankenstein Unbound.
May 10, 2024
Roger Corman Gone
The fabled “King of the B’s” producer and director influenced the careers of Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme and many others.
Roger Corman ROB KIM/GETTY IMAGESRoger Corman, the fabled “King of the B’s” producer and director who churned out low-budget genre films with breakneck speed and provided career boosts to young, untested talents like Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Gale Anne Hurd and James Cameron, has died. He was 98.
The filmmaker, who received an honorary Oscar in 2009 at the Governors Awards, died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, his family told The Hollywood Reporter.
Corman perhaps is best known for such horror fare as The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) and his series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price, but he became celebrated for drugs-and-biker sagas like The Wild Angels (1966), which was invited to the Venice Film Festival as the Premiere Presentation.
He also achieved notoriety for producing The Trip (1967), which starred Peter Fonda as a man on an LSD-inspired odyssey. Its controversy delighted Corman, who was one of the first producers to recognize the power of negative publicity.
May 9, 2024
Toadzac
by Hiyah Zaidi
The Colorado River toad is known for its psychedelic properties, but could it be hiding a major medicinal secret? (Picture: Getty Images)A hallucinogenic toad’s venom could be a new form of anti-depressant, scientists say.
The Colorado River toad, also known as the Sonoran Desert toad, has psychedelic venom just below the surface, which they secrete through their glands when it is scared.
And although it is well known that this toad’s venom can cause intense hallucinations and trippy experiences, until now scientists have been unsure how exactly it influences the brain.
But a recent study has found that the toad’s hallucinogenic compound could be the basis of a new antidepressant.
May 7, 2024
Steve Albini Gone
By Greg Evans
Steve Albini at his Chicago studio in 2014Brian Cassella/Getty ImagesSteve Albini, a singer and guitarist best known for producing some of the most groundbreaking and influential albums of the alt-rock genre, died of a heart attack at his Chicago recording studio Electrical Audio. He was 61.
Albini’s death and cause of death was confirmed by Taylor Hales of Electrical Audio.
Born July 22, 1962, in Pasadena, Albini moved to the Chicago area after high school to study journalism at Northwestern University. While there, he began writing for local punk rock ‘zines and beginning to record and engineer albums for local bands.
Stubbornly opposed to the larger music industry and its exploitation of artists, Albini formed the Chicago-based band Big Black in 1981, recording the first of several albums, an EP for the Chicago label Ruthless Records, a label he co-managed. That band last until 1987.
May 5, 2024
May 4, 2024
May 2, 2024
Paradance
A CEO shake-up, the home stretch of a takeover offer, a critical carriage negotiation and key advertising talks are colliding at the same time — and could decide the future of the storied company.
BY ALEX WEPRIN
Shari Redstone KEVIN DIETSCH/GETTY IMAGESIt’s the moment of truth or consequences for Paramount Global.
The entertainment giant, controlled by Shari Redstone via her family’s National Amusements holding company, is in the middle of arguably the most fateful week in its history, with critical business decisions set to collide.
On Sunday, the group of David Ellison’s Skydance, Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital and KKR submitted a “best and final” offer that would see them acquire National Amusements and merge Paramount with Skydance, infusing the company with fresh cash and installing a new leadership team.
May 1, 2024
Android Dreaming
from The Las Vegas Review-Journal
An artificial mind, with a lifelike bodyAmid a world of evolving AI, a Las Vegas man brings his creations to life
Matt McMullen’s company Realbotix makes lifelike AI driven robots. And he’s doing it all in a nondescript studio tucked behind his home. (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @rookie__raeYou wanna see her move? I think that’s the fun part.
The room is thick with anticipation and fabricated skulls.
She’s gonna wake up. Give her a second.
Matt McMullen eyes his creation as her eyes flutter open in return, her gaze settling upon all the disembodied faces and mechanical mandibles surrounding her in this workshop where fake hair co-mingles with real ambition.
Gradually, she stirs to life, this robot who doesn’t look like one.
Her arms flare out a bit, her head tilts downward then upward, a smile slowly, yet steadily blossoms on her face like time-lapse footage of a flower blooming in the sunlight.
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” renowned science fiction author Philip K. Dick once asked in the title of one of his most celebrated works, which would later be adapted into the film “Blade Runner.”
Nope, turns out they fantasize about visiting theme parks instead, as we learn on a recent Wednesday morning.
“So, who is going to take me to Disneyland?” the robot wonders, her words apropos of … well, we’re not quite sure.
Maybe she’s just reacting to her environment: on a table nearby rests a small sign adorned with an image of Mickey Mouse and a quote from Walt Disney.
April 30, 2024
Matrix Verified
The “Second Law of Infodynamics” could prove it.
BY DARREN ORF
Andriy Onufriyenko//Getty ImagesIn the 1999 film The Matrix, Thomas Anderson (a.k.a. Neo) discovers a truth to end all truths—the universe is a simulation. While this premise provides fantastic sci-fi fodder (and explains how Neo can learn kung-fu in about five seconds), the idea isn’t quite as carefully relegated to the fiction section as one might expect.
University of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson, who studies the possibility that the universe might indeed be a digital facsimile, leans into the cinematic comparison. In an article published on website The Conversation this past October, Vopson invoked the Wachowskis’ sci-fi masterpiece, and around the same time, he published a book on the subject—Reality Reloaded, a subtle hat tip to the title of the less successful Matrix sequel. While he is just one among many who’ve contemplated the idea, Vopson claims to have one thing that those before him lacked: evidence.
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